A large variety of electronic equipment and appliances employ man-machine interface units and man-machine dialogue systems or the like to ensure an easy and reliable use of the equipment or to check the identity of a user, for example in an entrance area or the like. Therefore, in many cases the identification of a person based only on a speech input is necessary.
Current and known speaker identification methods and systems have to be trained and have to register or to explicitly enrol speakers or users who are involved in the system. To ensure particular high identification rates and a large reliability of the identification result, each speaker has to register and has to be enrolled by speaking a certain amount of text, which may be a predetermined and pre-defined text or an arbitrary, random text.
The amount of speech from each of the enrolled speakers should be as high as possible to ensure a good performance within the identification process. On the other hand, the speech to be recorded in the enrolment phase should be as short as possible to minimize the inconvenience for the user.
In particular, in the special case of a finite member group and/or finite user group, where only a finite number of different users and/or members should have access and the right for operating the equipment or the appliance, the main goal of the identification process is to classify on the given speech input if a user is known or unknown. Furthermore, in such a case, for example in a home network system or in a home entertainment system being in connection with an entertainment or service robot, the members of the distinct group of users will find it inconvenient to register or to enrol an explicit way.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for operating and/or for controlling a man-machine interface unit which reduces the burden of the enrolment phase for the user or the member and which at the same time also ensures a good performance.